The first step in addressing the narrative is to identify it. To paraphrase Phillips, the root of the western narrative

is that the "Palestinian people" are the original inhabitants of the land. Whatever justification Europe's behavior towards its Jews, most notably during the Holocaust, created, the Zionists displaced those original inhabitants in creating their state. As such, their rights are limited to a portion of the land and the "Palestinians" are merely "resisting" to reclaim what the Zionists took beyond their entitlement.

Further statements are derivatives of this root narrative. Examples include John Kerry saying

There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years. Now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing.

and the equation of the deaths of Palestinian terrorists killed in the act of perpetrating terror with those of their victims.

To analogize, the root narrative is like rotting vegetables, the derivative narratives are like vermin, and activities like BDS are like the diseases that the vermin carry. No matter how often you call the exterminator, if rotting vegetables are strewn about, the vermin will come back and come back and spread whatever diseases they carry. Similarly, if the Jews did steal the land from the native Palestinians, then it is truthy that Israel is gobbling up land for settlements. And if Israel is gobbling up land and no appeals to moral conscience are inducing a change, then BDS may be necessary to push Israel's hand. However much we knock down the BDS efforts, if it is truthy that Israel is gobbling up land, the BDSholes will find fertile ground with the public and as long as the public believes that Jews are not indigenous to the southwest Levant while the Palestinians are, Israel's gobbling up land will be truthy.

One observation about supplanting the current western narrative is that doing so will require repeated airing of a counter-narrative. One means of doing so would be for someone who is sympathetic to Israel and has a position in the major media to write regularly about the history of the Jews of Palestine. An alternative approach would be for a public official to push information that challenges this narrative, which the media would be forced to cover. As of now, this is unlikely because no politician faces any pressure to do so. This is because currently the pro-Israel community's definition of a friend of Israel is one who is at least non-belligerent about the "settlements," a measure by which Obama is notably poor, or who supports providing arms to Israel, by which Obama is imperfect but reasonably good. Those two objectives are altogether appropriate objectives, focusing on them ignores what drives the constant challenges on those fronts. The message we have to tell our lobbyists who press our case to the politicians and decide whom to support is "It's the narrative stupid!"

If we were to evaluate politicians based on their contributions to the narrative, the question becomes what contribution we should demand from those wishing to be viewed as friends of Israel. There are two general categories of what we should wish to see promoted. One is the general history of the Jews of the southwest Levant. Critical topics would be Jewish history of the region in all major time periods and connections maintained between the diaspora and the Land of Israel. A supplement to this would be that the Arabs have no record of any kind showing any sort of connection to the southwest Levant. The second is the social order between Jews and Muslims in 19th century Palestine. These two categories provide a one-two punch against the prevailing western narrative. The former demonstrates that long before anyone migrated from Arabia to the southwest Levant, Jews were building there culture there and that they never fully vacated the region. The latter sets up a counterclaim regarding the reasons for Palestinian "resistance." Our goal should be that instead of seeing such "resistance" being based on "statelessness," that it is based on irredentism for the 19th century social order. In order to make that claim, it is necessary to describe what the Palestinians are irredentist for. The history of the 19th century provides that.

9 comments:

Excellent post."It's the narrative stupid!" In light of the history it's also a stupid narrative. The Arabs are not the original inhabitants of the land of Israel. This holds true even if one chooses to call it Palestine all day and all night including weekends.You are right that the Arabs are fighting for the restoration the previous social order where Jews are 2nd class at best. Israel is the resistance.

Aesthetes may relish the nuance but ordinary people are a mob, a herd. The Arabs are successful with their messaging because it's simple; it's one word, 'occupation'. The Jews need a similarly simple and simplistic message and they need to bang that home a trillion times over and over and over.

the "supposed Christians" could merely be pointed out as those descended from those who resisted Islam in the 7th century, but who also either replaced the Jews are were converted Jews.

I agree with Randy that the first order of business is to kill the cloak of infallibility Islam has with the left. Once that's gone, everything becomes WAY easier. The whole conflict is based of Muslims not wanting a non-Muslim nation in their midsts and not wanting even one Muslim holy sight controlled by non-Muslims.

I have never been a supporter of fervent history as justification. It really doesn't matter how long the Jews have been in Israel. Israel is a country now. Today. Here. It IS. It exists. It's not going anywhere. That's what the BDStards don't fathom. The Jews aren't going anywhere unless liberal west is actually ready willing and able to wage genocide.

Barack Obama on the so-called "Arab Spring" (May 19, 2011):

"There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat."

The "Arab Spring" was the brutal rise of political Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to?

The Fundamental Argument:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) "Pallywood."

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.

This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.

Quote of the Whenever:

It is not that most progressives are anti-Semitic. They aren't. It's that they don't get it, they don't care, and they very much want you to shut the fuck up. - Michael Lumish